This is one in a series of articles written by 47-year teaching pro Ozzie Carlson and is designed to help golfers improve their game.

Stay patient and simply hit fairways and greens. We hear it all the time. Play nice, boring golf and your scores will take care of themselves. Far easier said than done!

When we look at tour stats, the top-rated players average only about 13 greens per round. So as we saw in the U.S. Open at Erin Hills, even the best of the best have to chip well to save a stroke four to five times per round.

For most of us, those four or five chipping opportunities can be doubled to nine, 10 or more. So let’s determine where we are losing strokes and see if we can save a few more of them per round.

Do you find that you have trouble consistently getting up and down in two shots from just off the green? Do you tend to chunk or skull your chip shots? Do you have trouble getting the ball to roll out to the hole or go well past it? Does chipping and pitching regularly take a toll on your score?

From just five to 20 yards off the green, if it is taking you more than two strokes to get it up and in, at least from good lies, help is on the way. Here are a few fundamentals you can incorporate into your chipping routine.

Ball Position: Always align your lead ankle bone and handle where you intend to brush the grass. For most shots this should be an inch or so ahead of the ball. Feel the lead edge of your neck aligned with the back of the ball and stand with nearly 100 percent of your weight on your lead foot.

Next: watch the video (go to my Website: golfstuck.com) “To Chip Well, Set-up with your Right Side Through” to see how we achieve the feel of playing the ball “back” in our stance.

When you set up with your right side already feeling past the ball, two really good things happen: 1) you achieve a descending blow at impact, which gets the ball up into the air; and 2) you avoid hitting the grass behind the ball. In short, you have just eliminated the tendency to chunk or skull your chip/pitch shots.

Often, when I ask my students what they do differently to hit chips/pitches different distances, they answer, “I vary the length of my backswing.” To me, focusing on your backswing is akin to driving a car looking backward over your shoulder and hoping you will get to where you intend to go. Why?

Let me answer that question by posing a different question: which produces your ball flight - your backswing or your forward swing? Precisely! It’s your forward swing! So let’s both focus and feel where we are going by beginning each chip/pitch shot with the golfer’s question: Where must I swing to (or finish) to land my ball there (on my selected landing spot)?

Answer: For those shots of five to 20 yards, assuming you swing the club at its own natural speed (pendulum speed), you need to finish with your extended arms/club pointing to a spot 50-60 percent of the distance to your selected landing spot.

We most consistently achieve this follow-through position by setting up with our right side feeling through impact, i.e. “connected to” our intended finish position. When we do, our swing motion feels away from and through to our intended finish rather than away from the ball and back to the ball. So we achieve natural acceleration at impact primarily because the ball is now located in the middle of our swing motion rather than at the beginning and end of our swing.

And even more importantly, when we set up focused on observing our finish position “to see if we like it,” we are far more likely to actually swing to that 50-60 percent swing target required to hit our selected landing spot. Here’s to saving our score with better chipping!